Hughes - Birthday Letters

Within Ted Hughes' work, "Birthday Letters," I enjoyed the fact that they were written either for or around the relationship he had with Sylvia Plath. This viewpoint really helped me to connect more with their relationship, since a lot of the time neither of these poets really liked to come out and say "Hey! This poem is about Ted!" or "I wrote this about Sylvia!" Up until this point, the messages behind their poems were more muddled and I had to really dig through the pieces in order to figure out what lines were talking about who--or if a poem even had a relational reference in the first place.


One piece that I really enjoyed reading was "Your Paris." It's an interesting view, even from the beginning. "Your Paris, I thought, was American" (line 1). Since Plath was from America and Hughes from Britain, Plath's view of Paris was utterly American--meaning that we stereotypically will see the word "Paris" and automatically think of romance, beauty, and perfection. We don't think about all of the pollution, or wars fought there, or anything like that. We choose, instead, to think of the stereotypical, romantic idea of Paris.

I kept my Paris from you...

The Capital

Of the Occupation and old nightmare.

I read each bullet scar in the Quai stonework

With an eerie familiar feeling (lines 9-13). 

Within this poem, Hughes tries to explain that although Plath sees Paris as this beautiful, unadulterated city of dreams and romance, that it's so much more than that. It has a history of bloodshed and war, of revolutions and, like in any city, it has an underbelly of unrest. He even explains, "I was not much ravished by the view of the roofs" (line 28). This shows that his view of the city is much darker, and in his eyes, much more realistic--a roof is just a roof, no matter what city you are in. 

To protect you from spontaneous combustion

Protected you

And your Paris. It scorched up

Every scent and sensor. And it seal 

The underground (lines 45-50). 

But one of the greatest things about this poem is that even though Hughes doesn't feel the same way about Paris as she does, Hughes continues to shield Plath from this underbelly of the city. He doesn't want to ruin her idealistic view of the city, even though he doesn't feel the same. 

This, I feel, must have been the true love in their relationship--that he was willing to shield her from the ugly reality of humanity in order to allow her to continue seeing the good in the world, if only even for a moment. Perhaps this poem actually shows that Hughes knew about Plath's darker and more depressed side. Therefore, when he saw an opportunity to keep her in the light, he decided to grab hold of it with both hands and hold on for dear life.  

Hughes' Crow Poems

Personally, as it pertains to the Crow poems from Ted Hughes, I wasn't a big fan of them. There were bits and pieces I thought were clever, but over-all I thought they were repetitive and didn't really relate to my life all that much--a lot of them were very abstract and unrelatable. 

There were a lot of common themes throughout this section of poems: light, crows, religion, science/nature, sight, life (birth, death), pain, babies, blood, and tears. A lot of these were also words that repeated throughout many of the poems. 

A cry

Wordless

As the newborn baby's grieving (Dawn's Rose, lines 8-10)

Crys collide and erupt luggage and babies

In laughter (In Laughter, lines 1-2)

The unhurt eyes were full of deadliness ...

And mouths cried "Mamma" ...

Shock-severed eyes watched blood ...

There was no escape except into death.

And still it went on -- it outlasted

Many prayers (Crow's Account of the Battle, lines 14,19, 22, 33-35)

This repetition of ideas really helped connect this collection of poems, giving it a common theme and really allowing Hughes to delve even deeper into ideas he was passionate about. For example, nearly all of his poems surrounded the idea of life and death and how religion could be tied into his life. Religion and the idea of a god's hand into his life was a major part of Ted Hughes (and Sylvia Plath's) life. To see this idea come to life within his writing was very interesting to see. 

One of the poems that I really enjoyed was "Lineage." It took a couple of read-throughs, but I finally realized that the entire list all linked back to the word "scream."

In the beginning was Scream

Who begat Blood

Who begat Eye

Who begat Fear

Who begat Wing

Who begat Bone

Who begat Granite

Who begat Violet

Who begat Guitar

Who begat Sweat

Who begat Adam

Who begat Mary

Who begat God (lines 1-13).

This section of the poem speaks the idea that everything listed has been brought into being by the first thing - Scream. In one sense, we can link this back to the fact that birth often comes along with a screaming child. In this same way, something death comes with a scream as well. One other part of this I found interesting was what each line symbolized: biology, perception, emotional, animalistic, anatomy, solidity, color, music, labor, and finally religion. All of these things connect to our life and society, and the fact that the last three are all about religion speaks to the idea that religion has become, and has always been, a huge part of our culture. 

Even though I didn't really relate to this section of Hughes poetry all that much, I did think they were an interesting, if not repetitive, read. Thoughts welcome!